" "I promise I'll try." "I promise I'll try." "That's fair. Carroll is pregnant again." "What!?" I said, nearly shouting. "That's great! Why would that be a secret?" "Because she didn't do the same thing you did." It took nearly a full minute for that to sink in. "Why would that make a difference?" "Ken... You do not know how much I want to say 'Father' sometimes... Carroll hasn't had another child in so long because she's afraid of what happened the last time. I'm only two years old, but I think I know what incorporation shock means, now." I nodded. "You're right. It does make a difference. I restored something I had lost." I sat for a few seconds and then said, "Did Carroll ask you to tell me?" She nodded. Time passed as we sat, my hand idly stroking her back. She crawled forward in the grass and lay her head in my lap. I smiled and kept petting her, feeling her body thrum with that outrageous purring. "Ken" she asked, "is it too much to ask you to scratch my belly?" "Of course not," I said, and she turned over, all six paws splayed into the air. I rubbed her belly gently with my fingers, stroking up to her throat and then back down between her nipples and down between her legs. "Feel good?" "Go a little further down," she said. I my strokes ran the length of her body, and stopped just short of her vulva. "Further," she growled. "If I stroke further, I'll be-" "I know," she whispered, opening her eyes and looking at me. "Karen... Not now, okay?" She lay her head back against my leg and closed her eyes. "Okay," she whispered. "But don't stop scratching. Still feels good anyway." There is no better place to get a tan than the beach, especially a beach on Pendor, where the sun is always at peak, where the water is warm, and where there's a shower mere meters away. I lay on a towel with a copy of The Dominion of Katorri, a rather trashy translation of a rather trashy novel from one of the less friendly Terran colonies. Despite this, it was fun summertime reading, full of strong women making poor choices, which is the typical theme of the trashy novel no matter what planet you're from. |